PanOrient News | Soka Gakkai President Calls for 2015 Nuclear Abolition Summit

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Diplomacy

Soka Gakkai President Calls for 2015 Nuclear Abolition Summit

Friday, February 3, 2012

Tokyo- (PanOrient News) Soka Gakkai International (SGI) President Daisaku Ikeda called for a nuclear abolition summit to be held in 2015 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to ensure that the growing momentum toward abolition of nuclear weapons becomes irreversible.

In his 30th annual peace proposal, IKeda said holding this summit on the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of these cities, and in the year of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, would bring home to world leaders the terrible destructive capacity of nuclear weapons and help ensure the necessary action toward their abolition, thereby marking the effective end of the nuclear weapons era.

Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is a lay Buddhist movement linking more than 12 million people around the world. SGI members integrate their Buddhist practice into their daily lives, following the Lotus Sutra based teachings of Nichiren, a 13th-century Japanese Buddhist priest.

In this year's proposal, titled "Human Security and Sustainability: Sharing Reverence for the Dignity of Life," Ikeda pointed to the possibility of a more hopeful phase in the struggle to realize a nuclear-free world, seeing signs of a tipping point where a "cascade" of governments will support adoption of a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) to comprehensively ban nuclear weapons.

Reflecting on the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, Ikeda urged Japan to make a rapid transition to energy policies not reliant on nuclear power generation, and to intensify its involvement in renewable energy technology and research, both domestically and in support of efforts in developing countries. He also calls for a strengthening of the global role of the IAEA in dealing with the impacts of nuclear power plant accidents and the decommissioning of obsolescent reactors.

Considering the suffering caused by an increasing prevalence of natural disasters around the world, Ikeda called for an ethos of mutual support and aid to be cultivated throughout society, and for responses to be centered on a human rights approach. He proposed that UNHCR's mandate be officially expanded to include the provision of relief for people displaced by such disasters. He also stressed the importance of empowering women to play a greater role in disaster prevention, mitigation and recovery efforts.

Daisaku Ikeda, 84, has issued proposals analyzing the key issues facing humankind on January 26 every year since 1983, commemorating the founding of Soka Gakkai International on that date in 1975.

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